Corriston felt his throat muscles contract. He forced himself to bend over and search for a heart beat he knew he wouldn't find, remembering the other times when the outcome had been less fatal, when only a man's face had changed.
As his palm rested for an instant above the dead man's heart, the stirring of the sand immediately beneath him seemed to increase, to become a loud and continuous rustling sound that filled him with a vague sense of disquiet. He could not quite dismiss from his mind a feeling that he was still in danger, that in some strange, almost terrifying way Saddler was still a menace, and that the terrible reality of his death had not destroyed all of the hatred and savage violence which had forced Corriston to kill him in self-defense.
Suddenly Corriston realized that what he heard was not the wind stirring the sand at all, but something quite different. It was closer to him than the sloping rim of the dunes, and it was accompanied by movements directly under his hand, a sudden tightening of the dead man's skin, a contraction more pronounced than could have been produced by the abrupt onset of rigor mortis, however freakishly violent or premature.
The rustling continued for perhaps ten more seconds. Then, abruptly, it stopped and the heads of two lamprenes came into view, moving slowly across Saddler's unstirring flesh until their writhing mouth parts were less than two inches from Corriston's outspread hand.
The sight of them brought an instant of terror, an awareness of peril so acute that Corriston's breath caught in his throat. His hand whipped back and he leapt to his feet with a convulsive shudder.
It was suddenly very still on the dune again. Corriston stood for a moment with his body rigid, fearing to look downward, his mind filled with a growing sense of panic.
Had Helen Ramsey been attacked by lamprenes too? No, no, she was all right; she had to be. Everything confirmed it, her quietness, her steady breathing, the simple fact that her eyes had been closed and not opened wide in torment.
He descended the dune like a man ploughing in frantic haste through a snowdrift, sinking to his knees and floundering free again, lurching backward and sideways, sliding a third of the way.
She was all right when he got to her. He dropped down beside her and lifted her into his arms, and for an instant there was complete silence between them. She just looked at him, looked up into his face steadily and calmly, as if she could read his mind and had the good sense to realize there could be no more certain way of reassuring him. Then her arms tightened about him. "Darling," she whispered. "Darling, darling...."
Corriston started fumbling with his oxygen mask and suddenly he had it off. He held his breath and more slowly helped her free her lips so that he could kiss her. Their lips met and the kiss was longer and more intense than any they had ever before shared.